


Day Two: Purpose

by Demia



Series: JadeRose Week [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Deities, F/F, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 03:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7742257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demia/pseuds/Demia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose Lalonde needs a purpose to live. Her Goddess gives her one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day Two: Purpose

## 

Day Two: Witches / Fairytale

  


### Purpose

You can't remember the last time you prayed.   
You kneel on the dark soil, the wet leaves breaking under your weight, drenching your coat.  
It doesn't matter. Nothing matters now that you're at your altar, hidden deep in the forest around your house.

Nothing matters now that you're staring at the Goddess' effigy, thinking of every prayer you know the words for, thinking of what to ask, what to thank her for, what to beg protection for, from. 

What to _say_.

Apologies, you think, are definitely in order. You've been away long enough to cause the Goddess to forget your name, probably. And even if you know it doesn't work like this – the Goddess _never_ forgets, the Goddess _understands_ – you still bow your head low enough that your bangs caress the ground, and you ask for forgiveness. 

She breathes on your shoulders, she murmurs to you her mercy, she brings you back to life with her exhalations. 

The Goddess gives you a purpose. 

~*~

Your name, they tell you, is Rose Lalonde.   
You are not sure of their truthfulness, nor you trust them to be honest with you.   
Their eyes, they lie, they are dark, and their auras are polluted with cruel magic. 

It could be – and this you don't remember, you simply know, as sure and as deep as your bones and your marrow – that they are simply using extravagant spells, banned ones.   
It could be blood magic, sure, but you practice blood magic yourself, and your aura is still pure and untouched as any. 

It could be that their morals are askew, it could be that they mean no harm to you but to anyone else. 

It could be a lot of things, you still don't trust them or what they tell you. 

Your name is Rose Lalonde, anyway, and you will keep it because you have no other name to yourself.   
Not that you remember. 

*

They never ask you to join their rituals, you never ask to participate in them.

Their magic doesn't scare you, of course not. No magic will ever scare you. You are made of magic, and as such you are familiar with it, you are _family_ with it, bound by the blood in your veins and the air in your lungs to it. 

You're not afraid, but you are uncomfortable with their particular brand of spells. 

Dark, yes, but you know dark and it has never bothered you.   
Their darkness is corrupted and dense and too warm. Blood, fire and soil, no balance. 

Their morality, you realize after a few months spent with them, is not the only askew thing in their lives. 

*

The Goddess starts whispering to you as you approach your twenty-first year on this earth.

You guess you mistake Her voice for breathings of the soil, words of the forest, prayers of the animals. You're so attuned to the magic around you that you don't recognize your own Goddess' voice as She calls your name. 

She doesn't call you Rose Lalonde, nor She ever will.   
She calls you Seer, because this is what you are, this is what She has made you, and this is the path you will follow. 

There is no room for options, no room for decisions. You are the Seer, the Enlightened and Enlightener, the Teacher of Her Ways. 

You embrace your destiny because you don't know what else you could do. 

Your name is Rose Lalonde, someone has given it to you. 

It was not your Goddess.

You shed it like a dirty skin. 

*

“You're blind,” one of them – you think her name is Terezi, but you wouldn't bet your life on it – tells you.   
It is, somewhat, ironic, you suppose, what with her cane gripped tight in both her hands, a weapon, more than an aid, and her red glasses, on her face only to cover mistakes of an old life. A life she has left behind just as you plan to leave behind yours. 

Your existence as Rose Lalonde is over. You don't need it anymore.   
You are the Enlightener now, and you will Teach Her Ways. 

This is the mission you have been saddled with, and you will complete it without question and without complaints. 

“She speaks to me too, Rose. She knows how to lure you to Her side. You can't believe Her!” Terezi shouts, and you're sure she is actually worried for you. She is not the malicious kind, no matter how dark and cruel her aura tastes like. 

“If it is indeed a mistake,” you say, carefully folding your clothes and putting them in a bag, “it is a mistake I need to make. Alone.”

Terezi yells; anger, more than words, and you notice a distinct desperation to her voice.   
Oh, you worry alright, you worry for her and for all of them too, for them who have given you a name when you had none, them who have taken you as a guest and kept you for long years. 

You worry and you're grateful. You're not leaving to spite them, you're leaving _despite_ them. Despite the affection your feel for them, and the gratefulness you feel in your heart. 

“It's a suicide,” Terezi whispers, and those are the last words you will ever hear coming from any of them, and you will keep them in your mind, in your core, in your soul. 

Those are the words that will fuel your every action from now onwards. 

The fear behind them, the anguish, the love.   
You will keep those closer to you than any word the Goddess speaks, but the Goddess is giving you a purpose that these people and their fondness will never be able to provide. 

And you need a purpose to survive. 

*

“Rose Lalonde.” The voice is unfamiliar, but at the same time, it's like you've already heard it a million times. “Spawn of a Dark Coven. How dare you step in this forest.”

It's the voice your Goddess has been warning you about.   
Whispers of terror in the night, your terror, obviously, because the Goddess could never be afraid of a puny mortal such as the girl at your back. 

“Rose Lalonde,” the voice repeats.

You could fool yourself and say you couldn't have known of her arrival. 

Since you're you, and since you're not so proud and arrogant as to discard your own failures and short-comings, you admit to yourself that you haven't been reading the warning close enough. 

Your Sightings, as it is, have been confused and confusing, cause of more than one incapacitating headache. 

“I've been looking for you,” the girl says, lazily trowing a knife in the air and catching it without a hitch in her breath. The blade, you notice, is crossguard-deep in her hand.   
She is not bleeding. 

“I wonder what for,” you say, haughty as possible. You know this tone of voice is the one that pisses people off the most, and you kinda want to piss this girl off like no one else. You don't actually know why, though.

“Because,” she drawls, tying up the enormous amount of black hair in a tiny – definitely too tiny – green tie. “Someone has to stop you, _obviously_.” She says _obviously_ as if you're an ignorant child, and you think about casting a Depleting spell on her, just to see what could happen. 

“Stop me.” You hum, deep in your throat.

This girl, you notice as your eyes get more comfortable in the darkness surrounding you, has hears like a wolf, pure and holy white in the black sea of her hair, and a nose that resembles a muzzle and teeth like teeny tiny spears in her mouth. 

And she doesn't bleed from her blade, but maybe she bleed from magic.   
You wonder.   
“Stop me from doing what, exactly? What is the crime I have committed against my knowledge?”

“Oh, don't lie to me, Rose Lalonde. You know what your crime is, and you know who I am.” 

“I don't think so,” you say, and you're still staring at her. She has eyes made of jade, and skin so dark as to be invisible in the night. You think it might be as dark as wet soil, the kind you need for your more nature-inclined spells.

She might as well be the most beautiful and terrifying creature you've ever met.   
And the most wild. 

~*~

“Rose,” Jade calls you, disrupting your prayers.   
Oh, it lasted even more than you could have asked for, anyway.   
She always needs all of your attention, the silly girl.

“What is it?” you ask her, accepting her hand and her help for getting up. You've been kneeling on the cold ground for too long, you vertebra pop as you stand up, and Jade pulls you in one of her smothering hugs. 

She has a peculiar scent to her. Not an aura like everyone else you have met in your life, no.   
She has the perfume of humid leaves, rotting on the ground of the forest. She has the odor of photosynthesis and trunks and blooming flowers. 

She has the voice of the forest, and as such she is old and wise and loving. 

“Don't invite your dirty mistress in my home,” she scolds you, nuzzling your neck. She bites the tender skin of your jugular, doesn't break it, never breaks it. She doesn't need your blood, she doesn't want it either.

“My apologies, dear. It's just been so long since I've heard her voice,” you say, burying your hands in her silky hair. It's full of knots, as usual, and you marvel at the idea of spending the night combing it to perfection and splendor.   
Or maybe simply caressing it and the fluffy white ears, until Jade falls asleep on your lap, drooling all over your skirts and snoring so hard as to disrupt any chance of rest for you. 

This is your life, now, and you couldn't ask for anything better. 

~*~

The hunt goes on for months.   
You're so tired of fleeing every place you manage to make your home for even one meager night. 

You're so tired of not finding time to analyze your Sightings, of not being able to communicate with your Goddess. 

You're just so tired of everything. 

And the girl that doesn't bleed keeps following you, she tracks you down like no one's business, like she doesn't even have to put an honest effort in it, and you're so, so tired. So goddamn tired. 

*

“Just stop!” she yells at you, her voice so deep and rumbling, she sounds like thunder and you're stuck in the undergrowth and you're going to get struck by her lightning. “Rose Lalonde!” she says, and it's not your name, you have renounced that name, but it still strikes a cord in you, it still makes a hole in your heart every time you hear it. 

Because you have been Rose Lalonde, while you were a guest in the Dark Cathedral, and you miss those days like you've never missed anything in your life. 

You miss the Cloister of little morals like you miss those memories you've lost, the memoirs of a life you don't even know, anymore, if you have actually lived or if you've only skipped through. 

Maybe you were born Rose Lalonde, twenty-year-old. Already an adult as you came to exist in this world.   
You will never know.

But you don't need to know.   
You don't.   
You just need a purpose, and the Goddess gives you one. A great one, at that. 

You will not let the girl that doesn't bleed take it away from you. 

“What do you want from me?” you screech, stopping in your tracks and turning to face the monster.   
She doesn't have an aura, you don't know anything about her but from what your mortal eyes can see, and you're afraid of her. 

She is powerful, much more powerful than you could ever hope to become, but she doesn't have the blessing of the Goddess. 

You take your wands out of the pouch at your hip and you ready yourself. 

Blood magic comes easier to you, but the girl doesn't bleed.   
Not from steel, not from magic, not from anything else either.

“You're corrupting my home with your filth,” she spits out at you, baring her teeth. Oh, she's scary. She's terrifying. 

You are too. 

*

The battle, contrary to the hunt that preceded it, doesn't last long.   
It's a day, at most. Fourteen hours, to be precise, and as the moon stops shining in the forest and your tiredness and weariness start making themselves known to your possessed body, you crumble to the ground. 

The sweet scent of morning dew invades your nostrils, wets your eyes. 

You're so tired. You could sleep for decades.   
You could even forget, for this moment, the purpose the Goddess has given you.   
Teaching Her ways, after all, is a thankless and painful job and you just want to close your eyes and let everything go. 

Carelessness, though, is not a part of you. Has never been.   
Thoughtlessness is not something a Seer can have, nor Rose Lalonde. 

“Rose,” the girl that doesn't bleed says, and she steps closer to you, close enough that you see her bare feet in front of your face.   
Her nails are painted in green, as those on her hands. “Stand up, Rose.” 

“I'm afraid,” you whisper to her, and only because your voice won't go louder than this, “that our battle will have to be postponed. I'm finding myself incapable of moving, right now.” 

The girl chuckles, but there is no mirth in the sound, no prideful satisfaction for winning against you, and you feel no humiliation for losing. 

You know, after all, that your Goddess will not use this against you. She will not berate you for this failure.   
She never does, sweet and understanding as She is.

“It's okay. No more fighting for tonight,” the girl says, and she puts her large hands on your ribcage, her thumbs resting just below your breasts, and she pulls you upward, on your feet. Her hands remains on your body, you suppose, to keep you in position. 

Her jade-like eyes sweep over you, covering every piece of your body, searching for damage, for mortal injury that is not present.   
Because you're a careful warrior, those few times you deem fighting necessary, and you never let your opponent hit you where it hurts. 

“What is your purpose?” you ask her, because you need to know.   
You need to understand what moves her, what has made her follow you for so many weeks, what has made her scream your name in fury and disgust every time her eyes have caught your figure. 

You need to comprehend why she needs you to… To repent, maybe?   
To die?  
To leave?

What does she want?

“Keeping my home clean and holy.” She looks at you and she expects you to grasp some kind of hidden meaning. It is, sadly, completely lost to you. “You're a devotee of another entity, Rose Lalonde, and your faith is not welcomed in this sacred place. Nor is your filthy mistress.” 

“So you're a priestess of a Light God?” you ask her, and it does make some kind of sense, even if she doesn't have the common appearance of a priestess.   
She is built like a fighter, a weathered warrior, a master of weapons. 

She is strong, coiled muscles and instincts.   
She doesn't look like the kind of person who would bow their head to pray. 

“No, you silly creature,” she says, one of her hands sliding against your body until it's caressing your cheek. “No,” she repeats, and you see flowers blooming from her skin, “I am the forest. I am a Light Goddess myself. And your darkness is not welcome here.”

*

This is the story you tell everyone willing to listen.   
It is a fairytale, for most of them, something that could never be true. 

It is the story of a woman without a purpose. The story of a refugee, lost in the labyrinthine hallways of the Dark Cathedral.   
She hears the voice of a Dark Goddess, and she embraces her newly-given purpose of Teaching Her obscure Ways.   
She follows Her path religiously – in both a metaphorical and literal way – and she is the perfect Seer. The best Seer the Goddess has ever given the power of Sight to.

The Goddess is proud, and Her sister is jealous and angry. 

The Light Goddess, sister of the Seer's Patroness, is a creature of beauty and marvel. Gorgeous caretaker of the Holy Forest. 

In this story, a lot of common words get a capital letter, because a lot of common things are sacred and magical and perfect.   
You don't tell this to people willing to listen, but you tell them of how the Light Goddess has fallen in love with a corrupted mortal. 

Of how the Light Goddess, Divine Protector of all that is living and innocent, is going to turn a blind eye every time her mortal paramour needs to pray to the Dark Goddess. 

Because the mortal spouse has not renounced her ways. She has not given up her Gloomy Purpose. 

Your love, you tell the people willing to listen, doesn't work like that. 

Jade, after all – as you Goddess too – is very understanding and she knows you need a purpose to survive.   
You need a delineated path to follow, and she can't give one to you. 

Jade is Light and perfection and protection of everything holy.   
You are a corrupted thing, bringer of pollution, and she's in love with you anyway. 

This is the story you tell the people.   
This is the thing you narrate whenever you're done Teaching Her Ways. 

This is the hope you bring to dissipate the doom of Her terrible Lessons.

And Jade is the hope you keep closest to your heart. 

~*~

“I know, love. I'm sorry,” Jade murmurs, but she is not sad enough. 

She is happier when you don't talk to your Goddess for a while, but she starts becoming sad when you get restless, when your skin turn to gray and your words turn to gibberish. 

Her happiness is already starting to fade away. You place a kiss on her temple, tugging gently at her hair. “Let's go home,” you say, bidding goodbye to your makeshift altar in the deep of the forest. 

It will probably be another year before you can talk to Her again, but She understands. She understands much more easily than Jade does, sometimes, and you can't help but love Them both.   



End file.
